With his release from a Nevada prison over the weekend, O.J. Simpson must once again try and evade paying up a multi-million dollar settlement he owes to the family of Ron Goldman, one of his alleged victims in the 1994 double murder that destroyed his reputation as an affable former NFL superstar and celebrity pitchman.
“The good news for me is he’s getting out. The bad news for him is I’m in good health. I’m good to go,” California attorney David Cook told CNN.
Cook specializes in collections and has been representing Goldman’s family for more than a decade. Goldman was stabbed to death, along with Simpson’s ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, in June 1994 outside her home in Brentwood, California. While Simpson was acquitted of the killings in a 1995 criminal trial, he was found responsible for Goldman and Brown Simpson’s wrongful deaths in a civil trial and ordered to pay $33.5 million in 1997.
Since then, the figure has tripled due to interest, according to Cook. “I renewed the judgment in 2015 at $57 million. Two years have passed, so now it’s a touch under $70 million.”
Cook acknowledges that collecting on the debt has been difficult for a variety of legal reasons, but he’s ready for “round two,” should Simpson earn anything while out of prison. Simpson was released by the Nevada Department of Corrections early Sunday morning after serving nine years for a robbery and kidnapping in Las Vegas.
One issue that has made collecting on the verdict challenging is that Simpson is a retiree. ESPN’s Darren Rovell estimated that Simpson may have made over $600,000 from his NFL pension while incarcerated in Nevada but that $600,000 will be his to keep because NFL pensions are protected by state law, CBS sports said.
The Goldman family also can’t lay claim to many of Simpson’s other assets including any home he has owned or may own.
During his parole hearing, Simpson said he eventually planned to move to Florida, where the law there provides him additional protections from civil judgement. Simpson also moved to Florida after the civil trial, presumably to protect his assets.
Capt. Shawn Arruti, a Nevada parole and probation official, told the Associated Press on Sunday that Simpson plans to live in Nevada for the foreseeable future, but that plan could change.
There has been speculation that Simpson would move to St. Petersburg where Justin and Sydney, his two grown children with Nicole Simpson, now live. Simpson previously said he wanted to live in Florida, where he used to live and where he also has friends.
On Friday, State Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to the Florida Department of Corrections insisting that the agency tell Nevada that Simpson isn’t welcome.
“Floridians are well aware of Mr. Simpson’s background, his wanton disregard for the lives of others, and of his scofflaw attitude with respect to the heinous acts for which he has been found civilly liable,” Bondi said in the letter. “Our state should not become a country club for this convicted criminal.”
However, some saw Bondi’s move as political and say she has little recourse to stop him under an interstate agreement that governs parolee transfers between states, the Tampa Bay Times reported. The Interstate Compact for Adult Supervision holds that receiving states must accept transfers if certain criteria are met, such as the offender being a resident of the receiving state, having family in that state and having means to support themselves.
Other assets the Goldmans have laid claim to, with varying degrees of success, include Simpson’s Heisman Trophy. After the civil judgment, he was ordered to sell it. While it brought in $230,000, the Goldmans were never able to learn who had it, CNN said.
The Goldmans were also able to lay claim to the rights from Simpson’s bestseller “If I Did It,” referred to as a hypothetical account of the killings. However, it’s not known how much sales of the book went to the Goldmans. Cook said his clients will pursue any other income Simpson might generate, especially in the entertainment realm.
For the Goldmans, the point of this ongoing collection effort has never been about the money but the principle, Cook told CNN.
“There is no closure,” Cook said. “There’s one thing which is obscene in Fred Goldman’s vocabulary. It’s called closure. There is no closure because closure means there is some sense of Judeo-Christian forgiveness business — and that’s just not gonna happen here. That doesn’t work.”
